LAMENTATIONS: INTRODUCTION TO LITERARY STRUCTURE

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Reflection on the fall of Jerusalem in 586 BC is the sole theme of this book. There is also little doubt as to the overall method of organization in this book. The present chapter and verse divisions in this one book of the Scriptures have the distinction of certainly matching up with those intended by the author. We can be sure of this since the form of the book is a series of five poems, four of which are acrostics built around the 22 letters of the Hebrew alphabet, much as in Psalm 119.

This rigid, some would say artificial, structure is, however, balanced throughout with a great variety of emotional expression. Despite this variety, there is one common theological thread running throughout the book: the idea that suffering is the result of sin and caused by God's wrath.

Lamentations 1 is filled with “sighs” and pleas to God to “behold” the city's destruction. The refrain “There is no one to comfort her” appears five times in the poem as a unifying factor. Provan analyzes this poem as an alternation between the narrator's words and Zion herself speaking. 

Lamentations 2 follows a more logical sequence of thought and has as its starting and ending points the day of Yahweh's wrath. The Hebrew verb for “swallow up” appears five times in this poem, but not elsewhere in Lamentations. The Day (of Judgment) is a recurring theme in verses 1, 7, 16, and 21-22.

Lamentations 3 appears to be arranged around three equal blocks of material with hopeful expressions surrounded by those of a lamenting tone. It has a more complicated acrostic structure than the other poems in that each line, not just the first of each stanza, fits into an alphabetic scheme, resulting in 66 verses instead of 22.

Lamentations 4 has many more affinities to wisdom literature than evident in the other poems. It begins and ends with vivid descriptions of the city's destruction. In this regard, a key word/phrase appears several times: “(in the) streets.”

Lamentations 5 begins and ends with a recitation of the nation's sins and requests for God to act. This poem is not even written in the meter of the other four chapters and, unlike them, is not a true acrostic even though it does possess 22 verses.

Despite these many differences that give interest to this book, its unifying features are those on which we will concentrate. A discussion of the most obvious such feature, the acrostic form, will be saved for last in order to first highlight two lesser noted methods of literary organization which are present.

Repeated Words

One literary feature unifying the whole book is the appearance of certain words and phrases in multiples of seven. These include the imperative “behold!,” Jerusalem, “virgin,” and Lord. Altogether there are 49 (7x7) appearance of God in the text.

An elaborate pattern of repetition also occurs with “daughter,” a popular word in the books of both Jeremiah and Lamentations. Hillers explains its usage as serving metrical purposes and personifying the people or city as a woman, no doubt to enhance its image as a victim. But its presence also serves to unify the book. The 21 appearances in Lamentations may be readily broken down into three groups of seven, each showing a symmetrical pattern when the accompanying words (i.e. “daughter of x”) are considered. Another word pattern spanning more than one chapter is formed by the alternation in appearance of Jacob and Israel in chs. 1-2:

Jacob (1:17) Israel (2:1) Jacob (2:2) Israel (2:3a) Jacob (2:3b) Israel (2:5)

Chiasm

Even the ubiquitous chiastic structure may show up in Lamentations, as suggested by Osborne. His evidence is rather sparse and consists basically of (a) the statement that “ch. 5 is designed to balance ch. 1 to a considerable extent;” (b) the recognition of some shared themes between Lamentations 2 and 4: former glory contrasted with the nation's present condition, Judah's rulers being blamed for deceiving the people, and the nation's misplaced confidence; and (c) the focus of the whole book on ch. 3 with its “essential core of hope.” In addition, one could cite Gordis, who pairs Lamentations 1 & 5 and Lamentations 2 & 4 in terms of chronology.

In addition, many commentators have stressed the centrality of the third chapter in both position and importance, and its unique character (its elaborate acrostic structure has already been noted). But Lamentations 3 itself consists of three parts with parallels between the first and third. Thus, the whole book of Lamentations can be viewed as a seven-partchiasm, as proposed by Bo Johnson.

Figure 1: Symmetrical Structure of the Book of Lamentations

I. Chapter 1

II. Chapter 2

III. Chapter 3, part A

IV. Chapter 3, part B

III'. Chapter 3, part C

II'. Chapter 4

I'. Chapter 5

Unfortunately, there is no agreement among commentators on exactly how to sub-divide ch. 3, except in approximate terms. One would expect a neat division into three units of 22 verses each, but as Hillers states in another context, “Rather often the author deliberately 'syncopates', that is he sees to it that divisions of thought and formal divisions do not always coincide.” Most students of the book do see a central core of hope in ch. 3, but there is little agreement as to its limits.

If a chiastic structure is thus recognized for this book, it would go a long way toward countering Child's statement that the “relation between the various chapters does not appear to establish any progression of thought.” It would also provide an answer to those who feel that the optimistic statements in the center of ch. 3 are more than counterbalanced by the final despairing words of that chapter and the book as a whole. In fact, the book moves systematically inward from expressions of grief and utter despair toward a center in which there is complete confidence in God's mercies.

Acrostic Structure

Alphabetic acrostics occur in the Hebrew Bible in several places outside of Lamentations but scholars are not in agreement as to what this format signifies. When an acrostic form is used for the composition of Psalm 119, the “orderliness reinforces the meaning of the poem, which is the law of God. The poem thus illustrates on an artistic level the beauty of order that it declares to exist on the moral level.” (Ryken)   On the other hand, Nahum 1 begins with an acrostic that stops in the middle of the alphabet. “This disrupted acrostic occurs in a poem that extols God as the divine warrior who disrupts the normal created order. Thus, once again, form supports meaning.” (Longman) This type of reasoning can also be applied to Lamentations to arrive at two previously ignored explanations for its use of acrostics and for the anomalies in these structures that occur in the book.

First to note is that there is more than one acrostic structure employed in Lamentations, and it is in the subtle differences between these as one proceeds from chapter to chapter that the true significance of the form may emerge. Thus, one of the changes that occurs in progressing through the book is the diminution in the size of the stanzas. Lamentations 1, 2 and 3 possess three lines to each stanza, Chapter 4 has two lines, and there is only one line to each stanza in the final chapter. In a way, the book seems to be running out of steam. This stylistic trick reinforces on a larger scale one of the purposes of an individual acrostic: “The idea was that once the entire range of the alphabet had been exhausted to vent the deep grief of Jerusalem and Judah, about all that could be said had been said.” (Bullock)  A similar phenomenon occurs as one considers the tone of the individual chapters. An emotional first chapter is followed by two that are more logical in progression but still betray first-hand involvement in the events portrayed. The last two poems are more “matter-of-fact” in tone, and Lam. 5 does not even use the typical Qinah (lament) rhythm.

Two other features of this book have found no satisfactory explanation: the reversal of the sixteenth ('ayin) and seventeenth (pe) letters of the Hebrew alphabet in chs. 2-4 and the fact that Lamentations 5 does not follow an alphabetic scheme at all even though it contains 22 verses. The same variation in letter order also occurs in proposed earlier forms of Psalms 9-10 and 34 and in the Greek version of Proverbs 31:10-31. Hillers dismisses the possibility that the order of letters was not yet fixed at the time of writing as “sheerly hypothetical, and rather improbable” and contradicted by evidence from much older Ugaritic abecedaries (written alphabets). Not everyone agrees with Hillers, however, since abecedaries from the 9th-12th century BC have been found in Israel with this very same variation.

It seems clearly possible that this variation in letter order was still prevalent in Israel during the monarchy although probably not as late as the Exilic Period. Its presence in chapters 2-4 may have been introduced as a deliberate anachronism. The progression intended in the five poems may then be as follows: Lamentations 1 uses the order of the Hebrew alphabet current at the time of writing; this is followed by three chapters using an earlier version of the alphabet reflecting a time when the order was still in flux; and finally, in the last chapter only the number of verses remains the same but all semblance of alphabetic order has disappeared. In this manner, time is effectively reversed as the Book of Lamentations proceeds, and the reader is taken back through the history of the nation of Israel to a time before the conquest of the land. It should be noted that this movement is exactly the opposite of the progressive ordering process we encountered earlier in the Book of Genesis.

Two additional, potentially anachronistic elements are present in Lamentations 5 to support the above argument. Freedman has noted that this poem shares with most other, and earlier, Hebrew poetry an average of 16 syllables per line. By contrast, the first four chapters of Lamentations have lines averaging only 13 syllables each. The findings of Freedman relating to prose particles used in these poems point in the same direction. Thus, Lam. 5 possesses a style more closely related to the earliest form of Hebrew poetry. 

But Belcher may be closer to the mark when he states, “The use of acrostic poems in Lamentations points to a belief in the order and stability of life even in the chaos of suffering.” Thus, even while facing the reality of Israel's loss, the book has hope as the emphasis of both its central section and its penultimate verse “Restore us to thyself, O LORD, that we may be restored! Renew our days as of old!”